


The Ghosts of Alderaan

by ephemeralblossom



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Haunting, ToT: Extra Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-26 15:42:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12560704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeralblossom/pseuds/ephemeralblossom
Summary: Leia sees ghosts.





	The Ghosts of Alderaan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AceQueenKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/gifts).



A month after the destruction of Alderaan, Leia sees her mother’s ghost for the first time.

Another woman might have run screaming from the room, or gone to cry on a friend’s shoulder. Leia doesn’t have the luxury of tears. Not now. Not with the Empire trying to eradicate every last Rebel from the galaxy. Her parents were not the first victims of the Empire, and they will not be the last. 

After her mother’s ghost fades, Leia stands in her quarters and breathes, just breathes. 

Then she goes to medical and gets something for stress. She needs to be fighting fit.

***

On Hoth, when Leia thinks she’s lost Luke to the inhospitable planet, her father’s ghost walks beside her through the halls. She pretends she doesn’t see him, keeps her face turned away.

She has precious few friends left in the world. Many acquaintances, but few friends. Most died on Alderaan, in front of her eyes, as Vader held her in his iron grip. She can ill afford to lose any of those who she has left, and Han has gone out into the freezing darkness after Luke. 

She cannot afford distractions. She cannot look at her father’s ghostly face. 

When they come back alive, she can scarcely breathe, the relief is so strong. 

Her father’s ghost stands at her elbow, and she still cannot look at him.

***

Two weeks after Leia finds out Luke is her brother, and that the ghosts she has been seeing are likely due to her Force ability (not to stress and waking nightmares), Vader’s ghost appears in her quarters.

Unlike her parents, this ghost can speak. (Perhaps because he was a Jedi, before he murdered all those innocents and began his reign of terror at the Emperor’s right hand.) Leia discovers this when she is woken from a deep sleep by Vader’s voice next to her bed. 

“Daughter.”

It’s lucky Han isn’t in bed with her on this particular morning – he’s taken Chewie on a supply run this week – or she would have had some very awkward explaining to do. Either Han would have been able to see him, and freaked out, or he wouldn’t have been able to see him, and Leia would have had to explain why she suddenly sat straight up in bed on a half-voiced scream.

She looks at Vader’s ghost. He’s chosen to appear as a slightly sinister-looking young man, rather than the evil machine he became. Leia still knows him instantly. How could she forget the man who tortured her, the man who let Tarkin destroy her planet and kill her parents, the man who risked Han’s life in the carbonite on a whim, who cut off Luke’s hand, who almost let the Emperor kill his own son? How could she forget the faces of all those whom she had lost at the blood-soaked hands of this man?

“Don’t ever fucking call me that again,” Leia says, and pulls her blaster out from under her pillow.

She has to explain to Maintenance later why there’s a blaster burn across her wall, but it was worth it to see that ghost blanch and disappear.

***

Leia doesn’t tell Luke about seeing Vader’s ghost. She thinks he guesses anyway.

As the days turn into weeks, and the weeks into months, she holds tight to the ones she loves. The world is still a messy place, even without the Emperor and Vader. There are still so many battles to fight, so many dangers to overcome. Her work is not over.

But these days, when her parents’ ghosts appear, Leia lets herself see them.

Sometimes she even smiles.

***


End file.
